Baby Geniuses?

I don't know much about this, but it makes sense to me that childhood amnesia would be connected to self-awareness. The chapter on memory talks a little bit about this - schemas, or frames of reference, are a big part of how we compartmentalize data in our brains. So if you have no reference point for what's going on, it's harder to form memories. This doesn't rule out the possibility of remembering things outside of this framework, though, so perhaps it is possible.

My first memory is of getting eyedrops put into my eyes, and trying really hard to squeeze them shut. It's in a living room I don't recognize. My parents said I had pinkeye when I was two, and we lived in a house that we moved out of shortly after, so that's my best guess at what the memory was of. My memory has been pretty bad for most of my life, though, so I'm curious as to whether remembering early-stage stuff is correlated with memory abilities once the brain is more developed.

Interesting post Shawna. I had always believed that infant amnesia occurred because those events occur before a child has developed the ability to use language. Without words, it may be more difficult to encode memories in ways that make them easily retrievable.

That is not to say that memory systems don't work. Clearly the evidence you cite show that memory is working, but again certain conditions need to occur for recall such as the child being in the same place where the memory was encoded.

Recent evidence on memory shows that it the strength of a memory is not only about how well it is encoded but also about how often it is retrieved from storage and used in working memory. This is why you remember information from classes the more you talk and write about them.

I find that I never really know about a subject until I teach it. My memory for details improves the more I have to lecture about them.

Nevertheless, my earliest memory is when I was sitting in a blow up pool with my sister at Grandma's house. I was about 2 years old and could probably say a few things by then. There were also photos of the moment which I have seen and likely contribute to my overall memory.

My first blog was on a similar topic as this. I to found it interesting that people could not recall memories until 18-24 months of age. Does this just mean that the first two years of our life our lost to us forever? Also if this was the case how would we remember what was right or wrong before the age of 2? It seems that childrem much younger than 2 know when they are doing something wrong and how would they know this if they did not remember being punished for it before? My first memory was when I was about 3 years old on a plane to Arizona with the Chicken Pox.

I think there may be a connection between self awareness and being able to remember early memories, but I think there may be more to it. While we are young, we have not yet learned the importance of many things. When we do not see the value in remembering things, we often make no effort to remember them. Very few things from birth to the age of 4 seem very important. While I think the lack of self-awareness may contribute, I also thing importance of events also contributes.

I also believe that while we are young, our minds think differently. If we cannot think like we did when we we're three years old, it may be very difficult to remember something from that age. You often had no words to tag an event with, so it was hard to think about. It was confusing.

As for my first memory, I remember going to a dog race when I was about 4 years old. I don't really remember much before then. I'll vaguely remember things here and there, but the first vivid memory I have is of the dog race. My older brother wanted the #7 dog to win, and it was wearing green.